About Fathers

A child, an absent father, and life in prison

Paul Raeburn — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:52:08 +0000

Sarah Kruzan grew up with her mother in Riverside, California. Her father wasn't around. Some would argue that the absence of her father had a lot to do with the way her life unfolded. I would say it's probably more complicated than that.

According to a Frontline program in May, there are 2,574 people in the United States who are serving life sentences without parole for crimes they committed as kids.

Kruzan is one of them. I'll let her speak for herself.

What does your father mean to you?

Paul Raeburn — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:22:59 +0000

When I look down at my hands typing, I see my father's hands. When I repair a leaky faucet or a flickering lamp, I see my father doing the same thing as I stand by his side, waist-high, holding a flashlight and passing him a wrench or screwdriver. These memories make me wonder about what other aspects of my father-his character, his intelligence, his kindness, humor and artistic talent-are also part of me.

I'm especially interested in this now because I'm writing a book about why fathers matter, about what they contribute to their children, and why we so often seem to undervalue them. And while I'm turning over these questions myself, I'd like your thoughts, too.

What does your father mean to you? How did he shape you? What do fathers mean to our society, our culture, our nation? What would you change about the way we think about fathers?

Please leave your thoughts in the comment section below, or email me at paulraeburn@ymail.com. If you're willing to discuss this further, send me your email or phone number. Or message me on my Facebook page, facebook.com/paulraeburn.

Thanks so much for your help. I'll share the results in future posts. (And I will, of course, protect your privacy.)

Emergency out-of-network care can bankrupt families

Paul Raeburn — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 22:58:10 +0000

Gary Diego was relaxing with his wife, Ellen, when she abruptly lost her hearing and seemed to be losing her grip. She spent 17 days in intensive care before catching pneumonia and dying. A few weeks later, a still-grieving Diego--who had health insurance--got a bill for $75,462.77.

Study: Family service agencies should focus more on fathers

Paul Raeburn — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 21:39:15 +0000

Two 16-week programs--one for fathers, and one for couples--produced improvements in fathers' engagement with their children, the quality of the couples' relationships, and fewer behavior problems in their children.

The study, published in the Journal of Marriage and the Family, found that children whose parents enrolled in the programs were less likely to show signs of depression, anxiety, and hyperactivity.

Dr. Kyle Pruett, clinical professor of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine and a co-author of the study, said in a press release, "The vast majority of family services — from parenting classes to home visits — are really aimed at mothers, while fathers are almost completely overlooked. The research is clear that the best way to create a healthy environment for children is to engage dads and moms together.”

Pruett and his colleagues conclude that family service agencies are missing "huge opportunities to help children by focusing only on mothers."

The study was done with 289 couples in California, most of them low-income Mexican-American and European-American families.

Before beginning their study, the authors searched the scientific literature for reports on other such programs. They found a variety of programs being offered to fathers, but few instances where studies were done to see whether the program worked. "Most programs," the authors wrote' receive no systematic evaluation," and the few that do include evaluations usually gather data immediately after the program ends, so it's impossible to know whether any beneficial effects persisted.

Even more importantly, from a scientific point of view, few of the programs were done by randomly selecting participants and comparing them to non-participants. Without such comparisons, the it's impossible to know whether the improvements in the programs are greater than what would have happened without the programs.

Among the study's other findings:

--Parenting stress eased when fathers and mothers participated in groups together.

--The quality of the parents' relationships remained stable for more than a year after the programs ended.

--Ans children of fathers who went through the programs, with or without mothers, were "much less aggressive, hyperactive, depressed or socially withdrawn" than the children of fathers who were not in the programs.

In addition to Pruett, the study's authors were Philip A. Cowan, Carolyn Paper Cowan, and Jessie J. Wong, all of the University of California, Berkeley; and Marsha Kline Pruett of Smith College.

Childless man released from jail after being sentenced for non-payment of child support

Paul Raeburn — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 23:50:48 +0000

Frank Hatley, 50, has no children. He had paid child support for 13 years until 2000, when he learned a child belonging to a woman he had been involved with was probably not his.

Another example of the child support system gone entirely awry.

Take a look at CNN's version of the story.

Things lost when families dissolve

Paul Raeburn — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 18:48:09 +0000

A divorce can offer opportunity, but it almost always involves loss. Loss of the kids. Loss of the house. Loss of friends, loss of a familiar routine, maybe loss of a job.

Sometimes the things that are lost are oddly sentimental, or of emotional value only to the person who loses them. On rarer occasions, unique and truly valuable items can sadly disappear.

That's what happened to Rudy Mancuso, who took one of baseball's most famous photographs (above) and never received proper credit. It was taken on Oct. 3, 1951, during the final playoff game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants, the game that included the home run known forever after as "the shot heard round the world."

As my friend Josh Prager beautifully recounts in the Wall Street Journal, Mancuso was unable to sell the photo the next day, and he quickly fell into obscurity. A year later he and his wife separated. The priceless negative disappeared. And as the years drifted by, even his family came to doubt whether he had taken the picture. It became a "family legend," Prager reports.

In January, Mancuso's wife's sister died. While her nieces were sorting through her possessions, they found an envelope marked "baseball." Inside was the negative. They gave it to Mancuso, who was 89 years old and had not seen it for 57 years.

Mancuso transferred ownership to his sons, hoping it would provide for them. (Josh's story includes the photograph.)

It was timely; Mancuso died on May 10th.

When Mancuso lost his wife, he also lost the tangible record of the crowning accomplishment of his professional life. Happily for him and his family, he recovered it before he died.

More bad news for the children of older fathers

Paul Raeburn — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 17:52:03 +0000

A study of the children of older fathers has found subtle impairments of intelligence and other mental abilities during infancy and childhood.

The story has been widely reported, but the findings have not been put in the proper context. This is only the latest in a series of problems identified in the children of older fathers, an area of study that has been widely overlooked.

The risks faced by the children of older fathers are similar to those faced by the children of older mothers. But while we all know about the risks of Down syndrome in older mothers, most of us are ignorant of the risks in the children of older fathers.

And the risks for older fathers are comparable to those for older mothers. As I noted in The Father Factor, an article on this subject in the current issue of Scientific American Mind, Children born to fathers 40 or older have nearly a six-fold increase in the risk of autism as compared with kids whose fathers were younger than 30. Children of fathers older than 50 have a nine-fold risk of autism.

And advanced paternal age, as it's called, has also been linked to "an increased risk of birth defects, cleft lip and palate, water on the brain, dwarfism, miscarriage and ‘decreased intellectual capacity.'"

And to an increased risk of schizophrenia. This risk rises for fathers with each passing year. The child of a 40-year-old father has a 2 percent chance of having schizophrenia-double the risk of a child whose father is younger than 30.

And the kicker: A 40-year-old man's risk of having a child with schizophrenia is the same as a 40-year-old woman's risk of having a child with Down syndrome.

More recent studies have linked fathers' age to prostate and other cancers in their children. In September 2008, researchers linked older fathers to an increased risk of bipolar disorder in their children.

Add to that the new finding, that the kids of older fathers score lower on IQ and other cognitive tests. The study, in the current issue of PLOS Medicine, noted that the cognitive deficits were small, and that the children of older fathers might "catch up" to their peers as they get older. But nobody knows whether these early deficits might have implications for the children's development across their lifespans, the authors said.

So why don't we hear more about the risks faced by the children of older fathers? Why isn't it part of the discussion about whether, and how long, to delay child-bearing?

"I think there has been a bit of a cultural bias against even looking at this issue," says Dr. Dolores Malaspina, a professor of psychiatry at New York University Medical Center who has done much of the pioneering research on this. "It turns out that the optimal age for being a mother is the same as the optimal age for being a father," she told the New York Times.

Do the findings offend middle-aged men's sense of themselves, of their vitality and power? Do they puncture the image of the father as defender of the family?

These risks should be understood by every older father who's considering having children.

Gestures tied to vocabulary gap between rich kids and poor

Paul Raeburn — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 08:15:12 +0000

Children who make broader use of gestures to communicate at 14 months of age have larger vocabularies when they are 4-1/2 years old and ready to start school, according to a study released today in the journal Science.

The finding might help explain why rich kids have larger vocabularies than poor children. Wealthy parents talk to their children more (that's been known), but the new study shows that they also use a broader "vocabulary" of gestures.

The researchers noted that the vocabulary disparity between rich and poor remains relatively constant during the school years, is an important predictor of school success, and a primary reason why kids of low socioeconomic status have a greater risk of failure.

The key variable is not the amount of gestures. Nor is it the "size" of gestures. (Researchers have actually looked at Italians to confirm this point!) It's the variety of gestures--head shaking, and pointing at different objects to convey different meanings.

The authors of the study--psychology Prof. Susan Goldin-Meadow and post-doctoral fellow Meredith Rowe, of the University of Chicago--said their work does not prove that broader use of gestures causes better language development; they report a correlation. But they suspect that there is a profound connection. "The act of gesturing may change the mind," Goldin-Meadow said at a press conference in Chicago.

Goldin-Meadow said she has preliminary evidence that changing children's gesturing might improve their vocabularies.

The researchers observed mothers and children in their homes, video-taping 90 minutes of normal interaction. The key factor was not the number of gestures, or how often they were used, but the variety of meanings conveyed with gestures. A broader vocabulary of gestures was the thing that predicted a larger vocabulary when the kids were nearly 5 years old.

As is the case with so many studies in the social sciences, the researchers did not look at fathers. Of the 50 parents in this study, 49 were mothers. "We looked at primary caregivers," Rowe said when I asked her about the emphasis on mothers.

Perhaps there is no difference between mothers and fathers with regard to gestures. But one wonders: Do fathers have any particular role to play in closing the educational gap between rich kids and poor kids? How do we know unless researchers look at fathers?

Missing in the octuplets debate: Their father

Paul Raeburn — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 21:29:24 +0000

The Suleman octuplets are the product of Nadya Suleman and a sperm donor. They don't have a father.

It's tempting to put it that way, isn't it? But of course they have a father. Will it trouble them that they might never know him?

We often make casually inaccurate comments about the children of single mothers. "No, he doesn't have a father--his mother used a sperm donor." Or "Her mother adopted her."

That's wrong on two counts. First, on narrow biological grounds. As technically sophisticated as fertility treatments are, they still require sperm.

And that isn't as narrow a technical point as we might think. Each sperm carries with it a vast, twisted coil of DNA that makes up a huge part of a child's genetic inheritance.

But we know there is more to it than that. I cannot speak from experience, but we know adopted children often develop a burning interest in finding their biological parents. It's an important part of who we are, and not just because our fathers teach us how to handle money, or how to play ball, or any of the other things that, the stereotypes say, men contribute to their children.

They are a critically important part of us even if our connection is only through an anonymous sperm.

So: Who is the father of the Suleman octuplets? Does he know how his sperm were used? Is he happy about that, or unhappy? Does he wish he could get to know them?

We know a little about him, and it seems that this might not be a case of an anonymous donor.

Angela Suleman, Nadya Suleman's mother, told the Associated Press that all 14 of Nadya's children came from the same sperm donor, but declined to identify him.

The AP found a David Solomon listed as the father on the birth certificates of the four oldest children.

Will the children someday be angry with their mother for creating a situation in which they don't know him? She's had 14 children who might never know their father, or fathers.

Perhaps that won't matter to them. But I'd be surprised if that's how it turned out. Some of the 14 children might not care--but others surely will.

Update: Does Nadya Suleman think she is Angelina Jolie? Frightening story on HuffingtonPost.

Older Fathers: Increased risk of having children with autism, schizophrenia

Paul Raeburn — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 20:52:11 +0000

Just after my two-year-old son, Henry, was born, I was surprised and disturbed to learn that he was at increased risk of autism, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and other ills-because of my age.

My wife, Elizabeth, and I knew about the risks associated with the children of older mothers, with Down syndrome being the most widely recognized. She was tested for whatever was testable while she was pregnant with Henry, and he seemed to be healthy in every respect.

There is, however, no pre-natal test for autism or schizophrenia. And yet the risks are substantial: A 40-year-old man has the same chance of fathering a child with schizophrenia as does a 40-year-old woman of giving birth to a child with Down syndrome.

Why do we know so much about the genetic ailments associated with older mothers, but almost nothing about the diseases associated with older fathers?

In an article I've just written for Scientific American Mind, I note that the number of older fathers is on the rise, meaning the number of children at increased risk for autism and schizophrenia is also on the rise.

Nobody understand why this should be true. A woman's eggs are constructed and stored before she is born. It's reasonable to think that as they age, they might acquire genetic errors that could lead to disease. But sperm are freshly manufactured whenever they're needed; they are not stored. So what could be going on there?

The speculation is that something is going wrong with the so-called spermatogonial cells, the factories that make sperm. It's unclear what is happening, but the situation clearly deserves further research.

And why are older fathers not told of the risks?

That seems wrong to me. Some time ago, I called Charles J. Epstein, past president of the college of medical genetics, and Marilyn C. Jones, the current president, and asked them if they could explain why this don't ask-don't tell policy made sense, especially considering the new findings. "To put it out there every time somebody comes to you for counseling probably engenders more fear than light," Epstein said.

Jones agreed. "Paternal age is usually not addressed in counseling couples of advanced age because there is no simple test to address the risk," she said. "If there is nothing to offer a couple but increasing anxiety, many counselors and physicians do not bring the issue up."

Why then all the fuss about Down syndrome in the children of older women, when the risks for the children of older fathers are about the same? "You bring up Down syndrome, because you get sued if you don't," Epstein said. "And there are options. You can go through prenatal diagnosis, you have the option to terminate."

Epstein points out that the general rate of abnormalities of all kinds in newborns is about 2-4%. So even a 3% risk of schizophrenia in the children of men over 50 is not out of line with other risks. And it sounds less frightening when put this way: A 50-year-old man has a 97% chance of having a child without schizophrenia.

Still, I wish I had known what the risks were before we decided to have children. Would we have gone ahead anyway? That's difficult to say. But at least we would have had all the information we needed to make an intelligent decision.